Clickbank University Review: Is it Worth The Price?

Product Name: Clickbank University

Product Owners: Matt Hulett, Adam Horwitz, Justin Allen

Advertised Price: $47 per month

Upsells: $297/year, $97

Rating: 86/100

What Is It?

Clickbank University is a training center and community on how to
create your own info products to sell online. You can also learn how to
market other people’s products via affiliate marketing.

Short Review

The quality of training is very high, and the community is somewhat
active. The price is quite high but not unreasonable for what you get. I
think this could be a good product for someone looking to market
information via their own info product listed on Clickbank, but not for
someone looking to make money in affiliate marketing.

Before You Buy

Usually I have to deal with con artists trying to squeeze every penny
out of me on sales pages, so Clickbank’s straightforward sales page was
a pleasant surprise. They are clear about what you will be doing inside
the members area, and what your money will pay for.
The only thing that put me off was the emphasis on financial
independence and leading that “ideal lifestyle” of working from home.
While I agree that this is possible via the methods they teach, I felt
it was a bit over the top and reminiscent of other scammy products that I
review.
They have a legit training center and don’t need to play that type of game.

What I Liked

The main training center focuses on product creation, which is
different from most other “make money” systems that I review. Product
creation can be a very lucrative online business if you create a high
quality product(s) and can drive traffic to your site.
You can make even more money if you have a good email sequence for
email marketing, and even MORE money if you have good incentives for
affiliates to start doing the selling for you.
I didn’t watch all the videos available to me, but the ones I saw
were very candid, high quality, and provided real insight into how
online marketing works. I saw a few about how to think of a product to
sell, how to drive traffic to your website, and the basics of how affiliate marketing works on Clickbank.

There is a ton of info to read, so if you join Clickbank University,
you’ll have plenty to keep you busy. Beginners will definitely benefit
from training, as well as low-intermediate to intermediate level online
marketers. I think if you have experience and have just not found luck
with your previous campaigns, you might find the info pretty standard,
and might only benefit from later training modules (which I was unable
to view)

One last thing I liked was that their Facebook page was pretty active as far as their
posting goes. It’s always good to see that product owners are active in
social media because it shows they are investing time in the business,
rather than sitting back and waiting for paychecks as you struggle with
the training.

What I Didn’t Like

Is Locked Modules Really for My Benefit?

First and foremost, the most annoying thing about Clickbank Uni is
that most of the training is locked. Not only is it locked for the $1
trial, but even after you start shelling out$97$47 per
month (reasonably priced now), they still continue to lock it, and you
can only open the modules they deem useful, at a time they decide.

Sure you can unlock everything and do it at your own pace, but it’ll
cost you an entire year of “tuition” in one go. So if you are an
ambitious individual, you’d better be a rich individual as well, because
you’ll need $800 to get access to the material.
It was difficult to do a real analysis of all of the training they
offer because the $1 trial really only gives you access to introductory
videos. If what I saw is representative of what they plan to deliver
later on, then the training is very much worth the $97 per month fee.

Training Topics

They seem to be very focused on the business model of product
creation, squeeze pages, sales pages, and building email lists. I’m not a
fan of this because many times you end up having to pay for traffic
from no-so-great sources, or focus on getting affiliates to market for
you (if you are just starting out, this will probably add to your
challenges).
Though more labor intensive, I have had much more luck with free traffic from Google using keyword research and blogging. I may be wrong, but I didn’t see anything about that in their training.

Updated Price

Clickbank has since updated their monthly price to $47/month, which
is a lot more reasonable than what they were charing before. However,
signing up for CBU also means you get stuffed into a typical sales
funnel where the second you buy something, you are asked to buy
something else. You can see from the affiliate information below that
there will be a series of upsells and downsells after signing up.
Come on guys, let a brotha’ breathe a bit before you dig your hands deeper into our wallets

It seems odd that they would be charging for a website builder now,
since WordPress is 100% free and the most widely used builder out there.
I do not know what the current builder is, but if it’s unique to
Clickbank, it will mean you cannot move your website to another host if
you decide to leave. I will update on this soon, along with what the new
yearly price is.

Lack of Support

When I first landed on CB University, I heard crickets chirping.
There were not very many comments, and those few comments that were
there, were not answered. Some that were answered, were done so by other
members. From 4 pages of comments on one of their training modules I
created this graph to demonstrate the sorry state of support inside the
members area.

*Some edits to the order of comments were made to fit everything in this image

However, as I browsed the site more, I saw that there are in fact some “experts” that answer the questions of the members.
Who gets answers, and how often the staff chime in to help out is
very hit and miss. Some modules had staff replying to every comment,
while other modules had none. I would say that more often than not
questions were not answered, and there seemed to be a lot of confused
non-English speakers asking things that were not appropriate to the
specific page they were looking at.

No Pulse On Community

Part of the appeal of paying for a monthly membership being part of
an active community that you can exchange ideas with. In the sales
video, we were told that Clickbank University had a pulse, and was a
thriving community of people just like us.
But after investigating the training, community, and Facebook page I
actually saw very little activity. There were rarely more than 10
comments on a training video (including moderators), the most active
part of the forum was the “self introduction” top (12 comments), and the
Facebook page had nothing.

Granted, this is a pretty new product, but I would think that
Clickbank would have the experience and the means to popular their own
community.

Final Review

Clickbank University is a good product that’s worth the money.
However, there are cheaper communities out there, with equally good
training (or better), and a more active member base. This product is
best for someone that specifically wants to create their own digital
information product and has the $797(not sure what the yearly price is now) to pay the discounted membership price for full access to all the training from day 1.